Dionne Aminata

Dionne Aminata (AH - MEE - NAH - TA) has served over 20 years in education teaching elementary, middle school, undergraduate and graduate courses, and serving as an instructional coach, math content specialist, and public speaker. In 2020, she launched MathTrust, a consulting firm dedicated to supporting educators to seek the brilliance of Black students and trust all students to do the math.  In 2022, she joined the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) as a Math Advisor for the Math Collaborative, a network of state math leaders dedicated to affecting change in systems and policies in order to promote mathematics as a subject for all students. 

At Illustrative Mathematics (IM), Dionne is one of the Lead Authors of the IM K–5 Math curriculum, playing a key role in embedding curricular supports for culturally responsive teachers. She successfully supported LAUSD’s beta pilot of IM K–5 Math in 2020–21, and now serves as the Senior Director of Strategic Initiatives at IM in the Marketing department. In her current position she uses her marketing and curriculum implementation expertise to oversee research and outreach efforts to IM's community of users. As a part of this work, she supports math leaders nation-wide to successfully implement IM K–12 Math through the use of impact measurement tools, cycles of observation and feedback, and protocols to collaborate with peers, discuss problems of practice and share best practices.

Dionne earned her undergraduate degree in Sociology and Business at UCLA. She has an MBA In Entrepreneurship and Global Marketing from Babson College, and a Masters in Math Education from CUNY Brooklyn College.

Aims & Objectives for Dionne's Workshop:

In this session participants will learn practical and effective ways to seek out their students' mathematical brilliance, and use what students already know to help them meet the demands of the grade level. Through a lesson demo, participants will experience and then analyze teacher moves and gain key takeaways for immediate use with their own children. They will also have an opportunity to unpack the lesson design and learn researched practices for culturally responsive lessons, such as the one they will have experienced.